Month: October 2017

One of the biggest electric transportation conferences in the world will open its doors from Oct. 9 through 11 in the German state capital of Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart. In 2017, the city’s show grounds will see three events run in parallel – the Electric Vehicle Symposium & Exhibition, or EVS for short, the f-cell and the Battery+Storage. One day before the start of those, Stuttgart will have its Electric Transportation Day, AtEm.

The zero-emission future of the transportation sector has prompted an increasing number of energy policy debates on railroad electrification. At Hannover Messe, it was Alstom’s new fuel cell train that garnered much attention. After having been developed in less than two years, it had its first run in mid-March and will reportedly be used to transport passengers starting in 2018.

Not only has the second generation of Hyundai’s fuel cell car been unveiled earlier than expected, the price has already been set as well. The first event featuring the Next Gen Fuel Cell was moved up half a year and took place in mid-August in South Korea’s capital Seoul. The car scheduled to hit the market in early 2018 will cost EUR 54,000 (USD 62,712) outside South Korea

Soon, Toyota may not only be known for its fuel cell cars and buses, but for trucks as well. A new initiative called Project Portal aims to build a 36-ton truck equipped with two fuel cell stacks originally designed for the Mirai. They will be supported by a 12-kilowatt-hour battery to provide 500 kilowatts of output and 1,800 Nm of torque at a range of 320 kilometers (199 miles).

As early as last November, Switzerland saw the opening of its first public hydrogen station. But soon, it will create a whole new chapter with a fleet of hydrogen trucks to be brought into operation. A prototype has already been in use in the Zurich area.

Now, there’s another installation to add to the growing list of hydrogen production systems: H2Future in Linz, Austria. Supported by the European commission, it is managed by a consortium aiming to produce “green” hydrogen in large quantities to bring the energy and industrial sector closer together.

Germany is experiencing a further ramp-up of hydrogen filling stations. On July 31, two new ones started serving customers in Sindelfingen at the A81 freeway and in Pforzheim at the A8. The former, a Shell station southwest of Stuttgart, is in direct vicinity of the Daimler factory that houses the carmaker’s R&D facilities on fuel cell technologies. Stijn van Els, chair of the German Shell companies, said: “Hydrogen is a promising technological field. We expect this alternative engine fuel to play an increasingly stronger role in markets such as Germany, the Benelux countries, the UK and the US from the 2020s on.”

The German H2 infrastructure is growing steadily. Early this year, Linde expanded its offering around Munich by turning the Linde Hydrogen Center in Unterschleissheim into a public refueling station. What had previously been the industrial gas supplier’s hydrogen R&D facility has been used since Jan. 12 to fill up fuel cell cars such as the ones owned by Linde’s subsidiary BeeZero.

A look at this year’s calendar will reveal the absence of three trade shows previously held in Munich, Germany: eCarTec, Materialica and sMove. They’re not gone, but have been integrated into the eMove360° Europe, which takes place from Oct. 17 through 19. Robert Metzger, CEO of Munich Expo, said that the change in program had already paid off. This April, the number of exhibitors had already surpassed last year’s figure

After the parliamentary election in the Netherlands this March, it quickly became clear that the previous coalition partners could no longer hope for a majority. Talks about forming a new government have yet to yield any results. One reason for the breakdown in mid-May negotiations between the parties most inclined to join forces – VVD, Christian Democratic Appeal, Democrats 66 and GreenLeft – was their disagreement on environmental policy.